Environment and Society Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The key's answer is that both (A) and (R) are correct, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

Delhi's ambient air quality is poor and has worsened, and smoke from stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana does reach Delhi and adds to its pollution. Both statements are therefore true.

But stubble burning is seasonal, concentrated in October and November, while the assertion speaks of air quality deteriorating day by day. The year-round causes lie mainly within the region: vehicle exhaust, road and construction dust, industry, power plants and waste burning, made worse by winter weather. So stubble burning contributes to, but does not explain, the assertion.

Answer: B

The Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth.

Published in 1972 and based on computer modelling by a team at MIT led by Donella and Dennis Meadows, The Limits to Growth warned that if growth in population, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource use continued unchanged, the limits of the planet would be reached within about a hundred years. It fuelled public concern about the environment and the green movement.

Our Common Future (1987) is the Brundtland Commission's report, which popularised 'sustainable development'. Greenpeace is an environmental organisation, not a report.

Answer: D

The keyed answer is Empowerment of tribals, the one item that is not named as a core objective. I could not find a source that settles this beyond the objectives as usually listed.

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is described in its preamble and in standard accounts as aiming to undo the historical injustice by recognizing individual and community forest rights, to secure land tenure, livelihood and food security for forest dwellers, to strengthen the conservation regime, and to make the Gram Sabha the authority that starts the process of recognition. That covers recognition of community rights (A), livelihood (B) and empowerment of local self government through the Gram Sabha (C).

'Empowerment of tribals' as such is a general social aim rather than a stated objective of the Act, and the Act also covers other traditional forest dwellers, not tribals alone, which is why the key treats it as the odd one out. Treat it as the best answer by elimination.

Answer: C

The item that is not an objective of the Green India Mission is Disaster Management.

The National Mission for a Green India is one of the eight missions under India's National Action Plan on Climate Change (2008). Its aims are to increase forest and tree cover and improve the quality of degraded forests, restore ecosystems including grasslands and wetlands, promote agroforestry and social forestry on farmland, and enhance tree cover in urban and peri-urban areas, with gains in carbon sequestration and livelihoods.

Restoration of wetlands, agroforestry and social forestry, and urban tree cover are therefore all among its stated sub-missions. Disaster management falls under separate institutions such as the National Disaster Management Authority.

Answer: B

The key's answer is that both (A) and (R) are correct, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

The assertion is a common observation: unplanned growth of Indian cities, with slums, encroachment, inadequate sewerage and traffic, has degraded the urban environment. The reason is also accepted as a fact: India has long lacked a comprehensive national urbanisation policy.

On the key's reading the reason does not by itself explain the assertion. Environmental degradation in cities follows from many factors, rapid migration, weak municipal finance and capacity, poor enforcement of building and pollution rules, and the pressure of population, and the absence of a single policy document is at most one contributing condition. So the link is not the direct explanatory one that option A requires, and the options declaring either statement false are ruled out.

Answer: C

The programme is the National Green Corps, printed in the paper as 'National Green Crop'.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests started the National Green Corps in 2001-02 to build environmental awareness among school children. It works through Eco-clubs set up in schools, which carry out activities such as tree planting, waste management, water conservation and awareness campaigns, with teachers acting as in-charges.

'Nature Lovers' and 'Soldiers of Nature' are not the names of the government programme, and e-waste management is a regulatory subject (the E-Waste Management Rules) rather than an awareness programme for children.

Answer: B

The development projects that have displaced the most people are dams.

Estimates for independent India, such as those by Walter Fernandes and associates, put the total displaced by development projects at tens of millions, and dams and irrigation projects account for the largest share, well above mines, industries and wildlife sanctuaries. The World Commission on Dams (2000) likewise identified large dams as a leading cause of displacement worldwide. The Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada became the best-known example.

Mining and industrial projects displace large numbers too, particularly of Adivasis, and protected areas displace forest dwellers, but none matches the scale of reservoir submergence.

Answer: A

Environmental sociology focuses on the social dimensions of either the natural environment or the human-built environment.

The field, shaped by Riley Dunlap and William Catton in the 1970s, studies the interaction between society and the environment: how social arrangements produce environmental problems, how environmental conditions affect social life, and how people perceive and respond to them. That includes the built environment of cities as well as natural ecosystems.

'All environmental issues' is too broad, since the physical and biological sides belong to natural sciences. 'Environmental and economic dimensions' is environmental economics, and the third option narrows the field to people associated with the environment.

Answer: C

The New Ecological Paradigm is associated with Riley Dunlap and William R. Catton (printed 'Riley Dunlop').

In the late 1970s Catton and Dunlap argued that mainstream sociology rested on a 'Human Exemptionalism Paradigm', which treated humans as exempt from ecological constraints. They proposed a New Ecological Paradigm that sees human societies as embedded in and dependent on the biophysical environment, with real limits. This argument is regarded as founding environmental sociology as a field. Dunlap also developed the widely used NEP attitude scale.

John Hannigan wrote on the social construction of environmental problems, Ariel Salleh on ecofeminism, and Rob White on green criminology.

Answer: D

In the Belly of the River is by Amita Baviskar.

Published in 1995, the book is an ethnography of Bhilala Adivasi communities in the Narmada valley of Madhya Pradesh facing submergence by the Sardar Sarovar dam. Baviskar examines their relationship with the river and forest, their participation in the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and the conflict between state-led development and Adivasi livelihoods.

Patrick McCully wrote Silenced Rivers, a global critique of large dams, and Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil co-wrote This Fissured Land and Ecology and Equity. All are relevant to environmental conflicts, but none wrote this book.